After The Doctor
by DetectiveConanFan13
Summary: That isn't the Doctor. That is his brother. Sherlock needs to remember that. One-Shot. Rated T because I'm paranoid.


That's not the Doctor. It doesn't even look like him anymore. While the man who is no longer the Doctor is unconscious, he calls Mummy, because they need to have a chat as to why she now has another son. While she doesn't quite understand why this needs to happen, she agrees because she is a very bright woman and she knows he wouldn't ask for this if he didn't have to. She'll make the documents, but she leaves the fabrication of certain details to him.

She is the one who chooses the name Mycroft for him.

He'll have to have a reason for never having introduced the man to anyone before, but it won't be that hard to think of something. He has never introduced his mother to anyone he knew either, why wouldn't he do the same with his brother?

Oh, that's the perfect job for him. The government would be perfect. If anything of the Doctor is still in there, he'll do amazing things. If the Doctor was completely gone, he couldn't too much harm that the Holmes family couldn't neutralize.

The job will require a lot of favors for the Doctor-now Mycroft and that will take a bit to get used to-but it's too good an idea to pass up.

For a while, the maneuvering required to allow Mycroft to actually become a real human being is enough for him. It's not the same as traveling in the TARDIS, but it is exciting in an entirely different way. Eventually though, he realizes how boring life can really be.

He thinks idly of opening the watch, but he won't. One day he will, but it won't be soon. Probably. He's really not sure what he's waiting for.

The Doctor seemed to know, but he wasn't telling and Sherlock now knows why Lestrade occasionally calls him insufferable.

It's odd how much he dislikes this version of the Doctor (except he isn't the Doctor and Sherlock is pretty sure that's the problem). It's those moments where Sherlock is talking to the Doctor (But it's Mycroft now and he can't remember that) and he realizes that the other man is following what he's saying merely because he's brilliant and not because he simply _knows_ just what Sherlock is saying like the Doctor seemed to.

All the history between them is fake and sometimes Sherlock understands why Mycroft regards him oddly (for he is never the Doctor when he does that, because the Doctor _never_ did that), like he is not reacting _quite _right or simply pretending to be dim. It's all the memories that never happened that trip Sherlock up and it gets hard knowing that when he was eleven, he was not learning to play the violin in his room at the Holmes Manor like Mycroft remembers, but on the TARDIS because the Doctor had decided Sherlock needed a new pastime.

He never plays the violin in front of Mycroft if he can help it, unless he's feeling particularly spiteful and it never puts him in a better mood because _Mycroft_ doesn't get it anyway.

He's not sure whether to find it amusing or not that his various absences from the events in Mycroft's 'life' have been neatly explained by substance abuse. Sherlock and Mummy have such fun forging that paper trail and if Lestrade is treating him a lot more gingerly now, well that doesn't matter much, does it?

He takes up smoking for a while, but finds it unbearable and switches to nicotine patches. He pretends it helps him think, but that's just another lie that he's told for the Doctor's sake (because those acts are never for Mycroft, his fake brother).

He sees it in Mycroft's face sometimes. '_Why are you treating me like this?_' his eyes would ask. '_We were so close before you went away._'

The memories have tried to establish the same type of bond he had had with the Doctor, but that would never work because it wasn't the Doctor (and it was getting easier every time he reminded himself that, but it wasn't enough to stop the vitriol that came to his tongue whenever he spoke with the man who was _not_ the Doctor).

He sometimes runs into past reincarnations of the Doctor and that's always painful, knowing that one day that vibrant man would be locked away until Sherlock could deem it dangerous or safe ('_And could you be more vague in your instructions, Doctor_?'). He can't help it since the interesting crimes are more likely to be the alien ones, but if he occasionally refuses to work on certain cases, well… He's always been temperamental anyway.

He realizes how he has gotten too used to the Doctor forcing him to eat when he faints on a case (Quite truthfully, the Doctor seemed to forget almost as often as he did, but-between the two of them-Sherlock managed to eat semi-regularly.). He wakes up in a hospital and gets asked when the last time he had eaten was. Sometimes this week, he supposes. Definitely after Monday but before Thursday. The days kind of blended together until the case. He is startled to realize that he is not sure of the precise day. _Him. _He, Sherlock Holmes, is not sure.

That disturbs him enough to jumpstart a particular thought process which ends in the conclusion that a flat mate would be the perfect solution to his problem. A flat mate would eat, so the fridge would probably be stocked more often than it was now. Half the time he didn't eat was really because he was being an incurably lazy devil who did not want to deal with the drudgery of grocery shopping. Restaurants were what he usually ate, although he had learned to cook when he was younger. Thinking of it as practice for later experiments had helped his skills in that department.

So, a flat mate. Then he would also have to find new lodgings. His current lodgings weren't big enough for two. He vaguely remembered Mrs. Hudson mentioning she was looking for lodgers…

* * *

_**A/N: This was originally going to be a proper story, but then it seemed like such a nice one-shot, so I added some more information and this was all nice and done.**_

_**If it doesn't make sense in any part, please tell me! I'm not trying to confuse you all, it just kind of happens sometimes because it's all in my head already, so it feels like I wrote it down.**_

_**To those of you reading 'Twenty-Six Themes', I am working on that still. 'I' is giving me trouble, but I ended up writing 'T'. **_

_**This is un-beta-ed, so feel free to point out grammatical errors and such.**_

_**Thank you for reading and please review!**_

_**Ja ne!  
~J. DCF**_

_****_**Completed On: **15 May 2012  
_Uploaded On: _15 May 2012


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